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Nadig Lisa's avatar

How does a doctor get away with misprescribing/overprescribing drugs that can be dangerous or even life threatening, on this large scale, and for so long???

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Alan Joshua Woggon's avatar

This is an issue which I have studied extensively, and has affected me personally.

Licensing boards were set up ostensibly to protect public health; unfortunately, they have devolved into a cross between cronyism & state-sponsored extortion, pushing doctors into whatever supports the status quo and makes the board the most money, rather than what is actually in the best interests of public health.

Anyone can file a complaint, even someone who has never actually been a patient or set foot in the doctor's office. Doctors have been targeted for investigation because they underwent marital counseling years ago, or because they wore too much cologne and someone thought they smelled like alcohol. And once an allegation has been made, there is little chance of making it through an investigation unscathed - if the board has to spend any time or money looking into a matter, they will inevitably find some way of recouping their costs.

A doctor accused of suspected substance abuse issues or mental health concerns is often given a choice: go along with the board, be placed on probation, and be forced into "treatment" programs that are in cahoots with the board, with fees of $50k or more, essentially having their license held for ransom (Kernon Manion does an excellent job of going into the details of how these schemes work). If they refuse, the board drives them through a sham hearing, denies them access to their own health records, pays trumped-up "experts" to diagnose them under dubious pretenses, and hits them with huge fines & career-ending black marks, even if they have never been convicted of any crime, there is no evidence that patient care was ever placed at risk or standards of care were not being met, and despite any evidence that the doctor does not actually have any substance abuse or mental health issues. There's no real oversight of board decisions - in a hearing, the judge only makes recommendations, which the board is free to ignore, and appeals are time-consuming & expensive, with little chance of success. And of course only excessive punishments get appealed - were it not for the work of real, independent journalists such as yourself, these excessively light sentences would never be subjected to any judicial oversight or brought to the attention of the public.

In this case, I would guess that, because he's going along with the prescription drug model and thus still making money for big pharma, they went easy on him despite actual risks to patient safety. Many other doctors who challenge the paradigm by suggesting that the childhood vaccine schedule may be doing more harm than good (such as Dr. Shari Tenpenny) or by promoting COVID treatments other than the mRNA vaccine like hydroquinone (such as the member doctors of the FLCCC community) end up having their licenses suspended even though there may be no patient complaints, no evidence of any risk to public health, and no valid reasons for the board to get involved.

The boards don't care about the damage caused to public health by depriving a community of a caring, skilled physician. It happened to a friend of mine, who turned in his licensing renewal one day late. The board refused to accept it, considered his license invalid, and charged him with treating patients without a license, demanding he pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines. Once his name was in their crosshairs, they reviewed his private record (which, as a government agency, they have access to, regardless of whether or not the doctor consents) and, finding he had been arrested for a DWI several years ago, required him to undergo evaluation & treatment for alcohol as well — even though he had been acquitted of the charge, he had no other arrests, there were no complaints from any of his patients, and there was no evidence that his drinking had ever affected his clinical practice in any way. Normally, arrests not resulting in a conviction cannot be used as part of the decision-making process regarding professional licensure; healthcare boards, for some reason, are exempt from this law.

My friend wanted to fight it, but his lawyer knew it would do no good — the state always sides with the board. Refusing to follow the board’s rulings meant no other state would license him, so he was forced to shut down his practice, leave the community he grew up in, and move overseas  for several years. Eventually, he returned to the states, but had to set up practice in a neighboring state, as he was now forever forbidden from being licensed in his home state due to his defiance— all because he was a day late turning in a form, and the board saw it as an opportunity to engage in state-sanctioned extortion. He was the only doctor in the entire state who provided a specialized form of care for a common spinal condition; ever since he left, patients suffering from this condition no longer have any options for treatment other than an expensive & controversial surgery that leaves many worse-off in the long-term.

Another friend of mine was at a health fair when a local politician he supported stopped by his booth, and requested a simple & harmless therapy, which my friend provided for free. The politician later changed his stance on an important issue and my friend withdrew his support. In retaliation, the politician reported him to the state board for failing to obtain informed consent. The politician & several witnesses confirmed that he had verbally consented to the procedure, there was no evidence that the doctor had failed to meet standards of care, cause any harm, or place him at risk in any way, and it was well-established that this was a one-time slip-up, not a pattern, as he always obtained signatures from patients in his clinic. Nevertheless, because he didn’t get a signature this one time, he lost his license for two years, and since state law requires the owner of any business offering health services to have a license in that field, he was forced to shut down the business he had spent nearly twenty years building and start all over again from scratch after regaining licensure two years later. Had he been the sole provider, his family would likely have been forced into bankruptcy — fortunately, his wife was a successful businesswoman, and she was able to support them through the calamity — but he estimated that the damage to their family's finances was easily over a million dollars.

It happened to another friend of mine, whose patient was upset after he turned her past-due bill into collections. She complained to the board, and their investigation ultimately found that her complaint had no merit. Rather than close the case, however, they kept investigating the doctor until they finally found a reason to penalize him & recover the money they had spent on their investigation — a minor error in his recordkeeping, easily correctable, for which they fined him ten thousand dollars. He had recently gone through a divorce which had decimated his savings, and was unable to pay it. Rather than allow him to continue practicing & pay it over time, the board revoked his license. This does not seem to make sense until you consider that, to the board, a ten-thousand dollar fine is the equivalent of twenty years of annual fees. They don’t care if a doctor returns to practice or not, or how their decision affects public health — after all, in his case, there was nothing related to patient safety whatsoever. For the state boards, public health is just the mask they use to hide their greed & lust for power.

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